Two Harvard Business Students Want to Change the Way You Shop for Nude Clothing
Public Service Announcement: Nude is not the same color for everyone. My chocolate-coated skin tone is full of melanin, it is far from beige, but yet that's all I ever see when I'm looking for hosiery in the department store. Why is the struggle still so real for women to find nude clothing to match our beautifully diverse skin?
Luckily, two Harvard Business School students are here to fix the fashion industry's limited definition of "nude." Meet Atima Lui and Nancy Madrid, founders of Mia Pielle, a fashion-tech start-up created to help all women find clothes and accessories that actually mach their unique skin tones.
The innovative website allows users to pick between from six different shades of nude: ivory, pearl, honey, bronze, chocolate or mahogany.
"As two women of Mexican and Sudanese heritage, we often feel like we don't meet the standard of beauty in this country. From hair products to makeup, we've grown accustomed to companies not always meeting our needs as ethnic minorities," Lui told Mic.
After you selected the nude shade you think suits your skin tone best, your customized shopping experience begins!
"We were just brainstorming one day about how difficult it is for [Atima] as an African-American woman to find the right shade of makeup," Madrid told The Huffington Post. "And I mentioned [how] for me it's hard to find the right color of nude shoes. Sometimes they're too pink or they're a shade that makes my skin look green, and we started playing with this concept and we thought, well, we have to come up with a solution for this."
The two of them reached out to other women and discovered that most of them had the most trouble finding nude hosiery, lingerie, and shoes to match their skin tones.
The site isn't fully available yet to the public but stay tuned. Right now, the website is only available to about 300 testers, but you can sign up to be on the waitlist here.
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